The things they left behind

The teenage protagonist in my novel begins her search for the truth by going through her mother’s closet. Ida hopes to find out something about her missing father, but instead turns up a box of baby things, including a memory book and a fancy blue dress her mother sewed for her.

Seeing these special things again gives her a little thrill. She’s grieving and takes comfort in the familiar. Yet the scene is probably more revealing of the mother, Christine’s character. What she chose to keep, after a massive purging of the house, is evidence of her love.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the things we save and why. Off and on for the last two weeks, I’ve been cleaning out my own mother’s house following her move to a retirement home.

Having long outlived her parents, sister and two brothers, my mother inherited the house and all its contents, including more than three generations’ worth of letters, photos, documents, memorabilia, bric-a-brac and just plain junk.

Now that she’s moved out, the final clean-out falls to me, her only child, and my husband, Mark, who generously volunteered to help.

Every day of going through drawers and cabinets, garment bags and boxes has turned up a new find, another oddity, though nothing as dramatic as the family secret Ida eventually uncovers. (You’ll have to read the book.)

Sorting through the things my relatives left behind brings their stories and personalities into better focus. Some of the weirder items they chose to keep had me running to my mother with questions. She’s more than eager to tell me what she knows, but even she can’t explain the pretty Avon gift box with the single bullet rattling around inside.

She suspects it may have belonged to her brother, Tommy. I never met my Uncle Tommy, but here’s what I found out about him:

He liked to tease the family’s pet ducks, Donald and Dolly, but he was always sweet to my mother, his kid sister.

He loved all things military and collected WWII memorabilia, including pins, insignias and, yes, bullets. I tried but couldn’t find a large shell I remember from my childhood. It was at least five inches long and an inch thick, and heavy. My mom thinks it may have been inside a chest of drawers she sold.

Ironically, it was a bullet that killed my uncle. Mom doesn’t want me spilling the details, but it wasn’t war related.

Though violent and untimely, Tommy’s death wasn’t as obviously tragic as Donny’s. My mother’s younger brother never made it into adulthood. He was only six when a friend dared him to walk out on thin ice.

The blurry photo of him that my mother kept on her mantle shows a wild-haired, grinning boy in motion (hence the blur).

“He was the sweetest kid,” she says.

Of the four children, Mom’s older sister, Jean, seemed the most blessed. She was smart (according to the school report cards my grandmother stashed away) and such a talented artist and seamstress that she might have been a successful clothing designer. But she went to work for Boeing, along with her husband, and poured her creative energies into lavish holiday get-togethers.

Upstairs, in a box of old Christmas stuff, I found what I believe to be her handiwork: a brandy snifter made into a Santa Claus candy dish. The lid is a Styrofoam head with cotton beard and red felt hat dangling a jingle bell. It looks a little worse for wear, but I’m saving it to remember what Christmas used to be like.

When my aunt died at age 49 from cancer, I think she took my childhood love of the holiday with her.

My grandmother could be as sour and reclusive as my aunt was sunny and sociable. Losing your husband (at 50 to pneumonia) and three of your four children will do that to a person.

The woman I called “Nana” helped raise me after my mom divorced my dad. She was often angry — not at me, but at the world of money-hungry men, particularly in the Church and what she called “the medical establishment”.

My husband found a typed, four-page letter addressed simply to “Gentlemen” that blames the nation’s ills on Catholic leaders, “the legislature”, the AMA (American Medical Association) and anyone who would oppose birth control and death with dignity. She describes the latter as “putting (people with no quality of life) mercifully to sleep.”

“Who wrote this?” Mark asked. “It’s like an early feminist manifesto.”

That would be my nana. All the relatives knew not to mention religion or doctors around her. Today, as I scan her letter (I couldn’t read it all), I’m reminded of how incredibly strong, smart and somewhat exhausting she could be.

She did have a tender side, though, as evidenced by all the letters and cards from others that she tucked away. Boxes and boxes of them. Photographs, too. Today’s over-sharing, social-media generation has nothing on my grandmother.

Among the snapshots she kept is one of a familiar-looking girl, skinny and knob-kneed – “delicate” someone once called my mother — yet she’s the only one to make it into old age. At 80, the survivor’s guilt weighs on her still.

I pick up an early photo of her with a group of friends. They appear not to have a care in the world. Could this be the same woman who saved more than four decades’ worth of bank statements?

After years of living alone, battling depression and anxiety, my mother’s finally in a place where her social, playful side can come out again. She says she sometimes feels like she’s on vacation.

I’m happy she’s happier. Her house was in the process of falling down around her, yet she was loath to leave it — not resistant, just scared. Change has never been easy for her, and this was a BIG change.

Truth be told, the process of moving my mother and cleaning out her house hasn’t been that bad . . . well, except for all those glass jars filled with dead spiders in the basement. . . Why my grandmother saved those, I’ll never know.

I need to give my mother credit for getting rid of a lot of stuff before I had to. What she could have purged but didn’t were my (bad) arts and crafts projects, early newspaper articles, prom dress, graduation gown, and multiple photos of me being bathed in the kitchen sink. I was bald. My ears stuck out. I looked like Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz movie (see my first blog post), but I was loved . . . am loved.

What do the things you’ve kept say about you? Please comment below!